German Steel Trust

The merger of four major firms into the German Steel Trust (Vereinigte Stahlwerke) in 1926 was modeled on the U.S. Steel corporation in the U.S. The goal was to move beyond the limitations of the old cartel system by incorporating advances simultaneously inside a single corporation. The new company emphasized rationalization of management structures and modernization of the technology; it employed a multi-divisional structure and used return on investment as its measure of success.^[1] it represented the "Americanization" of the German steel industry because of its internal structure, management methods, use of technology, and emphasis on mass production replicated the Steel Trust developed a multi-divisional structure and aimed at return on investment as a measure of success. The chief difference was that consumer capitalism as an industrial strategy did not seem plausible to German steel industrialists.^[2]